The Naked Baker Marrickville

The Naked Baker Marrickville — the viral croffle eggs benedict lands in the Inner West

The Mortdale bakery that turned the croffle into a brunch event has crossed into the Inner West. The Naked Baker Marrickville is the second store from owner Dino Manoleskos, who started with a food truck parked outside what's now the Mortdale shop. He taught himself to bake, did TAFE courses on weekends and opened his first bricks-and-mortar store in 2023 at the age of 22. The new site sits on the corner of Addison Road and Fotheringham Lane. It's a big, industrial space with floor-to-ceiling windows and seats for 100.

Everything is made in house, and all the dishes that built the Mortdale following have made the move. The headliner is the maple croffle eggs benedict with thick-cut maple bacon. The chorizo eggs, OG pizza focaccia slices, Portuguese tarts and cinnamon buns are all here too. Marrickville also gets its own signature: an apple turnover reworked with miso caramel apple and nutmeg custard, wrapped in flaky croissant-laminated pastry. On the drinks side there are two Marrickville-only specials, a Vietnamese salted cold foam latte and a blueberry matcha.

Manoleskos calls it less a bakery and more a cafe that bakes. You walk in past a cream bench topped with a glass cabinet of the day's pastries, with an open kitchen working behind it. That glimpse of the bakers at work is what the Naked Baker name comes from. Stone tables and good crockery give the room a restaurant feel, so it's set up for staying a while rather than grabbing a pastry and running.